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Flying Traffic Jams, Elon's Style: Why Traffic Cops Should Fear AI

October 23, 2026

If you ever thought AI was coming only for the livelihoods of programmers and writers, think again. The next knockout punch might come from an unexpected direction: the marriage of Tesla-style electric vehicles and SpaceX-inspired rocket technology. And the first people sweating over their job security might just be our beloved traffic cops. Imagine a beautiful sunny day. You’re cruising fifteen meters above the ground in your shiny flying Tesla Roadster when "oops!" you exceed the speed limit. Suddenly, that legendary traffic baton, the one that has sent countless drivers obediently pulling over to the roadside, becomes nothing more than a useless stick. Down on the street, the officer cranes his neck and waves frantically. Up in the sky, you cheerfully wave back, convinced he’s simply trying to start an airborne sing-along. Even his famously sharp whistle is drowned out by the roar of your rocket-powered engine, leaving him standing in a cloud of dust, wondering whether he ...

Hélas, Paris ! The Fall of Existentialism

October 20, 2026

Paris in Turmoil: An Elegy for an Intellectual Movement The social upheaval and unsettling images coming out of France in recent days have left me with a heavy heart. To those who have never lived there, Paris may be little more than a glamorous capital, a tourist destination, or a symbol of fashion and the arts. But for those who have experienced the changing seasons of France, from the golden autumn leaves along Parisian boulevards to the sunlit Mediterranean coast of Nice in winter, the quiet charm of Bordeaux’s old streets in spring, and the vibrant summer days of Lyon between its two rivers, these images are more than news on a screen. They touch our memories and our affection for a country that has left a lasting impression on our lives. If Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus could return to life and stroll along Boulevard Saint-Germain on a suffocating Parisian afternoon, amid social tensions and public unrest, they would surely have much to contemplate. Perhaps they would still ch...

Bias is a seasoning of life

October 03, 2026

Bias is not entirely the enemy of humanity, but neither is it something we can freely indulge. In everyday life, our preferences, memories, and personal attachments give each of us a unique way of experiencing the world. However, when we turn to evaluating facts, constructing knowledge, or making judgments that affect others, bias can distort our understanding, lead us to accept only what reinforces our existing beliefs, and reject contrary evidence. More dangerously, when bias is concealed beneath academic credentials, specialized terminology, and an appearance of erudition, it can become a form of pseudo-intellectualism: using the authority of knowledge to protect the ego rather than to seek the truth. The issue, therefore, is not whether human beings have biases, but whether we can recognize the limits of our own understanding and how we respond to evidence. We can maintain our personal preferences without turning them into universal truths; we can defend a position while remaining ...

In Search of a Definition of Failed Higher Education

September 14, 2026

Universities once helped humanity move beyond the rule of divine authority. Today, universities must help people learn not to become slaves to their own instincts. When do we know that a system of higher education has succeeded? We often answer this question through familiar measures: graduation rates, grades, employment rates, salaries, university rankings, research publications, or how well graduates meet the needs of the labor market. These indicators are useful. They tell us something about whether an institution is functioning effectively. But they do not answer the deeper question. What kind of human being does higher education produce? A university may produce graduates with excellent academic records, impressive technical skills, and highly competitive salaries. Yet if those graduates cannot govern their own desires, cannot use power responsibly, cannot distinguish between having something and being someone, and cannot continue learning when the world changes, can we really say...

MIT’s New Position on AI in Education: A Framework for the 2027 Academic Year

September 02, 2026

MIT is late to the conversation, but at least we finally have the conversation in writing. ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. Since then, generative AI has moved from an experimental technology to an everyday presence in education. Students use it to write code, explain difficult concepts, summarize readings, search for information, brainstorm ideas, and work through increasingly complex projects. Nearly four years later, MIT has now articulated a comprehensive institutional position on how generative AI should be approached in teaching, learning, and research training. That may feel late. But it is also important. Rather than treating GenAI simply as a cheating problem, MIT’s framework asks a much more fundamental question: What should education look like when machines can increasingly perform many of the tasks we traditionally use to measure learning? The answer is not to ban AI, nor to surrender education to it. Instead, MIT proposes a set of principles that put learning, ...

Three Modes of Knowledge Transmission on the Lectern: An Educational Leadership Perspective

August 27, 2026

The faculty hiring season for the new academic year has just come to an end, as we prepare for the fall semester. After many cycles of opening and closing semesters, and after watching people step up to and step down from university lecterns, I have gradually come to recognize something interesting: people can stand in the same classroom, teach the same subject, and even use the same textbook, yet they may not be talking to their students about the same thing called “knowledge.” The difference does not simply lie in the degree hanging on the wall, the title on a business card, or the number of years of experience listed on a résumé. It lies deeper—in the way a person develops understanding, draws upon experience, engages with theory, and ultimately questions what they themselves already know. If we look at education from this perspective, I often see three approaches to knowledge emerging from the lectern. They are not three fixed types of people, nor are they three steps on a...

Netflix’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is Great: If You Want to Enter the Modern Future World and Grasp Postcolonial Concepts, This Is the Series to Watch

August 12, 2026

Just released, season two of the One Hundred Years of Solitude series on Netflix demonstrates an increasingly confident effort to adapt Gabriel García Márquez's classic novel. While the first season primarily introduced viewers to the mythical world of the Buendía family and the town of Macondo, the second season significantly broadens the story's scope. Macondo is no longer a relatively isolated community; instead, it begins to be swept up in economic and political forces far beyond its residents' control. Railroads arrive, the banana company expands its operations, labor is organized under new logic, and alongside these changes comes a social order increasingly influenced by external capital. What is notable is that the film does not turn this process into a simple narrative about "progress" or "invasion." The railroad serves both as a symbol of modernization and as a doorway through which new power relations enter Macondo. The banana company brings c...

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